


The Dying of the Light

by Elvendork



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Grief, Mourning, Post-Reichenbach, canonical character 'death'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 15:17:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10665348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elvendork/pseuds/Elvendork
Summary: I am unhurt. Do not read papers. Will explain when I return.Watson returns to England following the events at the Reichenbach Falls. He and Mary weather their grief together.





	The Dying of the Light

I spent much of the final leg of my journey attempting to compose myself in preparation for facing my wife. I knew that my telegram had been woefully inadequate, but truly it had been all I could manage at the time.

_I am unhurt._

That much was true at least, if rather deliberately phrased to avoid false assurances of my general well-being.

_Do not read papers._

Would she have heeded my warning? I hoped so, and at the same time selfishly prayed that she had not. 

_Will explain on my return._

A foolish promise, because now I would have to deliver the news myself, and I was not ready.

I was not ready.

X

I should have known, of course. My dear Mary knew me far too well.

I had hardly stepped off the train before she had her arms around me. I returned her embrace gratefully - desperately.

‘I’m so sorry, John,’ she whispered, and I held her all the tighter for I believe by that point that she was all which held me upright.

‘What - how -?’ I responded, entirely wrong-footed by her certainty.

‘Oh, my dear,’ she soothed, stepping back but keeping her hands on my arms. ‘You were unhurt - but not _well_? Something had clearly happened which was momentous enough to make the newspapers before your return, but unsuitable for a telegram?’ She paused, and then again she expressed her sorrow.

Wordlessly, I held out the pages that I had found at that terrible chasm, already much-thumbed from repeated readings. My wife read them slowly, mouthing the final words as tears welled up in her large, sympathetic eyes.

‘Let’s go home,’ she murmured eventually. ‘Let’s just - we’ll go home.’

X

The ride back to our home was a largely silent one. Mary and I never relinquished our hold on each other’s hands, but we did not speak. For my part, at least for those few minutes, I did not need to; simply to be in her presence was a balm to my aching soul.

It was only once we were back and settled before the fire with the curtains drawn that we spoke again. Both my hands were wrapped around a steaming cup of tea. Mary was seated beside me, one palm laid atop my left wrist, her expressive features clearly displaying her grief.

‘What happened?’ she asked eventually, so quietly that I could almost have imagined it.

‘I left,’ I replied without thinking. ‘It was a trick, and I left. A woman was ill - I thought a woman was ill - and I went to help, but it was a trick. I was too late. I got back and found his note. If I had stayed, perhaps - but then I will never know, will I?’

‘Why don’t you tell me from the beginning?’ Mary suggested gently.

X

Later - much later, when I had talked myself hoarse and we had both cried our eyes dry - Mary stood up. I felt her absence immediately, like a breath of cold wind. She crossed the room in a few quick steps, and then she was back - now bearing pen, ink, and paper.

‘Write something,’ she instructed, simply. It was somewhere between a suggestion and a plea. ‘Write about him.’

‘I can’t,’ I averred, actually shrinking away from the proffered items.

‘Not about this,’ Mary corrected me. ‘Write something from earlier. Something that makes you smile. Tell me about one of your old cases. Please?’

I could see in her expression that she needed this as much as I, and yet I still could not bring myself to actually record anything. Not yet. The pain was still too raw, and my thoughts too muddled, to do anything justice. I could not think beyond the terrible _what if_ , wondering what might have been changed had I stayed with Holmes, had I seen through the trickery - had I _been there_.

X

It wasn’t until some weeks later that I finally took my wife’s advice. 

In truth I had been thinking long and hard over what to record first. I had found myself idly perusing old notes, even once or twice planning out narratives in my head.

Still, when I eventually put pen to paper, I did not fully realise which case I would be writing of until the words began to appear before me.

_To Sherlock Holmes_ , I wrote - and the release, painful but welcome, dreaded but cathartic, like lancing a wound, was immediate, _she is always_ the _woman_...


End file.
